Wedding etiquette Q&A

Re: Wedding etiquette Q&A

• grumbledore member

  

  October 2013

  Devonshire22 said:

  kristbot said:

  Devonshire22 said:

  We haven't decided how long the gap will be. Perhaps ceremony at 2:30, ending about 3pm? Then dinner at about 6pm?

  I honestly don't think I've ever been to a wedding that hasn't had drink tickets or an open bar. I guess we'll be faux pas on that one.

  Yep that's what I thought about the Honeymoon registry. We'll axe that idea!

  Also confirms what I thought about the "dance" portion.

  The jewellery is kinda both. Something that'd be nice for them to wear on the day of but also something they could definitely wear again. We're not talking cheap, tacky costume jewellery either.

  Your gap is far too long. Either push back the ceremony time or push up the time the reception starts. Why can't you have the ceremony start at 5:15 and the reception start at 6 with 15 min travel time in the middle?

  
  And do pictures when??

  In this scenario, you do a first look.  Or start your ceremony around 4, then do pictures while your guests are at a hosted cocktail hour.

  
  

  

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• crunchymamaof2 member

  

  October 2013

  I have to ask: if you had no intention of not having some sort of cash bar why did you bother including that question in your list? Cash bars are not acceptable. It doesn't matter if they're normal in your group. I'd rather get funny looks for properly hosting my guests over the risk of offending some guests with a cash bar. You're not a mind reader so you really have no idea if everyone would be okay with a cash bar. Tickets are the worst IMO, they are the epitome of "we don't trust you to act like adults so we'll treat you like children."

  Why isn't beer & wine the whole night a viable option for you? I think that would be a great compromise!

   

  As for the gap and pictures, etc. The only acceptable gap is a hosted one, and that is called a cocktail hour. So you could have a 4 or 4:30 ceremony (with some pictures beforehand if you'd like, a cocktail hour at the reception venue from 4:30-6:00 (you'll then take pictures while that's going on) and the reception will officially start at 6.

   

  Multiple showers are fine, just make sure the guest lists don't overlap much, if at all. No honeymoon registries either.

   

  Bridesmaids usually buy their dresses (after asking each of them their budget privately. THe dress can't cost more than the lowest budget.) If you require a specific shoe, hairstyle, jewelry, etc then you need to pay for it. But if you just say "any black shoe" and any hairstyle then they take care of it.

  After 6 years and 2 boys, finally tying the knot on October 27th, 2013!

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• AroundTheBlock member

  

  October 2013

  "Gift" registries of any sort betray misguided thinking. You should never be thinking of your future plans in terms of what goods and services your friends and family might choose to bestow upon you. All those things, from fine china to front-loading HE washers, and everything including honeymoon trips in-between, are the responsibilities of you and your future husband, who being mature enough to get married are also mature enough to take on those responsibilities. What is confusing you is the century-plus old tradition of department-store "Registries" which went of the rails some time in the last twenty or thirty years, and got the word "Gift" slammed on to the front of them.

  Setting up a household for life is a big deal, and takes a fair amount of planning. You aren't just setting up for the needs of your 2013 lifestyle, but also for the next fifty or seventy years, for raising children and celebrating their achievements and welcoming grandchildren. It used to be a normal thing for girls to be taken down to Birks or Lawley's or Eatons to "pick their patterns" sometime around their twelfth birthday or so. The department store would "register" their china, silver and crystal patterns; and over the next decade they would slowly collect an entire service. The department store would use the registry to notify them of sales -- or heaven forbid, of discontinuations -- and close friends would "snoop" into their registry to discover their tastes, and maybe give a teacup or place setting for birthday or Christmas gifts. Some families still do this -- my grand-nieces have been collecting their china for years. When weddings finally rolled around, guests might resort to the registry for the larger serving items to finish off the service; and in later years when a guest accidentally stepped on a wineglass carelessly placed on the floor(!!! -- not thinking of anyone in particular!!!) he could appeal to the department store for help in replacing it without ever embarrassing his hostess by asking for details.

  Birks, which was the Queen of department-store registries for decades, has dropped all products except jewelry, so all that is really left is the Bay; but they tend to keep your "wedding" registry on record for as long as you keep adding, deleting, or buying from it at least once every two years. I don't think that's their policy, just their practice. But even without the help of department store permanent registries, it's worth your effort to plan out all the fine heirloom goods you might need to set up the kind of marital household you want yours to become. Do it in a spreadsheet, perhaps. Just as in the good old days, it is not your job to advertise that list (in fact it would be rather exhibitionist). It's up to the guests to snoop a bit and find it. After all, the prurient pleasure of snooping into someone else's private affairs is rarely enjoyed in this internet age where every detail is made overtly public! Maybe print it out, and tape it inside the door of your bathroom medicine cabinet when you have guests over! (or put it on your household website, on an unlinked page where you can find it from your smart-phone when you need to refer to it, and snoopy people who know how to find unlinked pages can 'discover' it).

  Planning the material goods for your future household made sense in an age of heirloom-quality permanent goods, and relative poverty where an entire service of fine china could and did take decades of scrimping and saving. One of the realities of the twenty-first century is that many people are recognizing that experiences are just as precious as "stuff". Memories can enrich your marital life as much as can Waterford crystal. So if your planning for your future together involves planning some precious memories, like starlight dinners on the beach or base-jumping or balloon rides, there really is no reason not to list them too on your "registry" spreadsheet. Or front-loading clothes washers. If these are things that you are planning to acquire and are taking responsibility to acquire, rather than just creating the wedding version of a letter to Santa, include whatever you want. If registering at some store gets you those things on sale for "registry completion" or whatever they choose to call it, then register at the store as well -- finagling discounts is thrift: an admirable quality in a new wife. The point is that it isn't a "gift" registry and you aren't advertising it. If other people snoop hard enough to find out your private plans and wishes, then they are in no position to pass judgment on you.

  And you can trust guests to snoop. Guests are ingenious and network well. You don't really need to help them buy you gifts.

  
  

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• kitty8403 member

  

  October 2013

  #3 get a bartender, or a couple of them. It's not going to cost you that much.

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• kitty8403 member

  

  October 2013

  Re shuttles, I have been to several events that did this and as a guest, I very much appreciated it. I expect we'll hire a shuttle for the main hotel, at least.
  
  Favors: not necessary, etiquette-wise, but I do notice. If you put out little treats "for the table," like nuts or butter mints, I suspect they'd be missed less.

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